Snowyamur

That's good to hear, but the problem still recurring with Blade & Soul is that it isn't generating enough publicity. It's an eastern game, so marketing it in the west is difficult; if it caters more to a western audience, while continuing to favor the east, the game would be much better off. Unfortunately, I don't see that happening anytime soon.

Wouldn't this spread more bad word of mouth?

So is this like Treasure Trove but more effective, or is it slightly worse?

This doesn't sound okay... Why release something that's akin to a loot box without listing the possible rewards, especially since this box is RNG?

NCSOFT has committed many mistakes, but I'm walking on a thin rope of optimism that they can get their act together and really make the game shine. As for the community, online game communities will always be toxic and call out problems made by a company at every chance available. Consumers care only about what they want, and many developers and executives seem to forget that for consumers, as long as the product they get is fair, is decently priced, and works, they really don't care what happens. In NCSOFT's case, the player base has every right to call NCSOFT out on their flaws because what they've done were huge problems that tainted the game and community. When they changed how White Orbs worked, they ultimately screwed with players who spent countless hours farming and stockpiling them. They replace the orbs with Orb of Ascensions, and the players who had thousands of White Orbs weren't even compensated. That's just one of many horrible flaws by NCSOFT that made the player base trust them less. Months afterward, NCSOFT releases their Legends Reborn event that favors high-leveled, high-geared players and whales, being severely restricted against F2P players and the casual player base, and at that point, the "event" isn't even an event; it's end-game content. Worst of all from that event is that what's going to keep this game afloat is attracting more new players and catering to them; when new players found out they couldn't even play this event, it drove them away. Keeping the whales alone won't save this game. Despite that, one thing I've noticed is that whenever NCSOFT releases something, players immediately hate on them, in most cases, without even trying what they released. Again, they have every right to complain, but hating on something before trying it doesn't make sense, and that needs to be understood, otherwise every update released is just going to be hated on.

To add on to that, Team Bloodlust is a development branch at NCSOFT HQ, which means most feedback from their South Korean and Asian game markets will be usually be received first before EU and NA.

It's an eastern game coming over into a western gaming market. This is common across many eastern MMORPGs, and this primarily has to do with publicity, advertisement, and audience retention. If this was a western MMORPG, the game would be doing a lot better than it is now because we're in the west, and western game industries understand what westerners want in their videogames, as well as how to market them appropriately. To be fair, both NCSOFT and the community are to blame for Blade & Soul not doing so well right now; NCSOFT for making and pouring out bad game design decisions that are ruining the game's health, and the community for becoming progressively toxic towards anything NCSOFT does now, on top of spreading bad word of mouth. Granted, things like these should raise concerns and help improve the game, but it's clear NCSOFT won't listen to us because here in the U.S, it's NCWEST, and they aren't in charge of the updates being poured into this game; their only job is to hear about what has to be released, announce it, release it, and take the beating afterwards. If we were part of the Korean gaming market and complained, I'm sure NCSOFT would listen because their HQ is located in South Korea, but we aren't, so we have to deal with it. Sad truth, really, but that's how it is.

That's an interesting case that you brought up, but where did you hear or read about this? Do you have a source for us to look at?

Or, you can't get Resurgence Tokens without spending a countless hours being active everyday on this game. But yeah, the event that NCSOFT deployed for Blade & Soul was a mistake, and it's not a mistake to be ignored. Whales benefit the most off of this event, and the restrictions are high. It's also not that fun for an "event" because it's primarily a bunch of daily quests, rather than it being a 24/7 continuous momentum that anyone can opt in and out as they wish.

Players will never take responsibility for their own actions; most don't care, or fail to see that they could be the potential element to a lingering problem in the gaming community. It's always been like that, and it'll continue being like that. People refuse to change, or are blind to their own actions creating problems. With that aside, I see your point now. It's not just NCSOFT; it's the community as well, but it's important to acknowledge that even with a strong community, a game industry could make mistakes. Like many game industries, it's about the money, and Asian game industries take this to the next level by going down a P2W route. Korean MMOs seem to be the root of all this, from my experience at least. Most of the Korean MMOs that I've played always focus on over-fantasizing and making the female characters overly sexually appealing. Why? Because executives at these industries know their male audience love this, and they're willing to spend nickle and dime on getting cosmetics for their "waifus" or "digital girlfriends" because they can't get a real date in the real world, and it works. It's a proven market strategy that works, despite it being morally and ethically wrong, but those codes have been broken across multiple games, so it's near-commonplace now. Moreover, with Korean MMOs, there usually is a P2W element in it. ArcheAge was a P2W game made by Trion that I used to play, and it was a P2W in a nutshell. You couldn't gather or farm materials without spending money on resetting a daily farming timer, and you could buy materials through microtransactions. TERA by BlueHole Studios does the same thing, but not as strong. You could spend money on getting armor and gear, and these boost your stats, even in PVP. This is also P2W, but slightly worse. It's also strange that on that game, you could buy undergarments for all your characters; I'm sure a male audience would love to have their Castanic female characters running around in their underwear because why not. Sadly, this is going to continue with just about any eastern game released in the west, and it's never going to change. Personally, I think it's possible to simultaneously satisfy a market on the west, and a market on the east. It's extremely difficult because that requires flexibility of market practices, on top of understanding a country's cultural market practices, but it's possible.

I'm still supporting and waiting on this to happen. Please make this happen, so that the Forums becomes more community-friendly and has more personality.

PvP has always been broken in Blade & Soul. If I were you, I'd stop because until it gets better, you're only going to have a miserable time trying to win when it's nearly impossible to win.

Yeah, factions need to become more relevant and useful. Nowadays, all factions are used for is to farm low-level faction mobs to get insignas and get the cool costumes. After that, it's pointless.

I now understand why this player is mad about the lack of account-bound items: you can't trade them across alts.

Can we all just accept the fact that the Legends Reborn "event" isn't an event, but end-game content? Can we all agree that this should just be end-game content and work on coming up with ideas for a better, and actual, event?

Then that's a problem they have with themselves, not the game.

We really need to stop comparing one game to another. It's better to look at what made a game good, and adapt that principle to another game to make it better; that's how change works in a positive way. Also, microtransactions are killing gaming, that's for sure, but there's nothing that can be fixed. The damage is already done.

Players come in all shapes and sizes. The reason I personally don't like elitists is the way they handle situations when a player doesn't know how boss mechanics work. They become elitist because they think of themselves smart, but they forget that they were n00bs at some point in their climb to better-understanding this game, and they fail to acknowledge that. So when they come across someone who was their former self, they treat them as if they were stupid, and that's rude not only to the person, but oneself for not understanding that they are looking at themselves in a mirror. Yes, there are players who will tell the newcomers what to do and how certain mechanics work in a civil manner, but there are those who won't approach it this way. Nowadays, when it comes to legendary dungeons and people queuing up for a party, there are players, notably the party leader, who will look at your gear level. It's important to have people with the right equipment, but elitists straight-up kick players sometimes, and this is becoming more common. Worse of all is that if a newcomer dies or fails to understand a mechanic you just told them, people acknowledge that player as stupid right away. That's berating them, and that doesn't help them. Maybe they didn't hear you, maybe you used game terminology they didn't understand, or maybe you explained the mechanics in a way that was short but incomprehensible to save one's life. Regardless, players assume these players are stupid without acknowledging the situation they could've been in, or just asking them why they did what they did, so they yell and insult their intelligence for no good reason. Games bring out the worst of people, and this is an example of it. Not a perfect example, but an example nonetheless.

Agreed. The western gaming industry continues facing these issues, but the eastern gaming industry faces greed and P2W problems. That's a fair statement, and I agree with that. If I start wondering whether I should continue playing this game, I should think about my wallet, since it's so involved with this game. However, I brought up the idea of "severing the cord" from this game primarily from the recent announcements being made publicly. Server-merging? That's a bad sign that player population is much lower than what's considered "safe." People could argue with me as to why I should care how populated servers are, and the reason I care is because how many people play a game determines how alive it is, especially if this game is an MMORPG. Some may argue that's not the case, but I say it is for publicity reasons. The more people that play a game, the more attention it gets. It's like finding a place to eat. Newcomers or tourists would prefer to try out a restaurant that's populated than a restaurant that's empty because they know populated means good food, while empty means bad food. Same thing with Blade & Soul; if more people play it, the more publicity and attention it gets, and the more players it receives because it gives the impression that the game is good. An event that's this restricted? I'm talking about the Legends Reborn event. It's not restricted because of the cosmetics; it's restricted because not everyone can participate in it. An event is an event if everyone can have their go at it, if they can't, it's more like end-game or locked content. I've explained what this meant across different posts, so I won't explain it here.

I didn't make this thread to insult the NCSOFT development team; I made it to raise a question as to whether it's worthwhile to continue playing this game seeing as what's being done to the game in its current state. In no means am I offending game developers in this thread; if you feel insulted, I'm not trying to insult you. In fact, I didn't make this thread with malicious intent to call out how bad NCSOFT's development team is. Also... just because you're a programmer, that doesn't mean you know how game programming works. If you work in a game industry, hats off to you; you know how it works. If you don't, you could be in software development, but that's not the same as game development. I'm a game developer myself, and I've managed and worked with game dev teams during my time in college. I've coordinated with people and taught them source control, Unity, data management, task management, workflow with Git, and other topics of interest to game developers. I continue working as a game designer on an off-job project with 2 other game developers on improving the state of a Garry's Mod source game that's still being improved and used today. I'm derailing the topic here, but my point here is this: don't claim that someone is disrespecting a game development team, and don't say that as a programmer, you're insulted. That's being sensitive about something not even implied, and that's going along with the "YouTubers don't know how game dev works" argument that gets tossed around a lot in the industry when YouTubers whine about why a game is broken, or why something "simple" can't be fixed easily. The argument made here is also a poor argument for this case because I'm not insulting NCSOFT's game dev team; I'm insulting their executive decisions made for this game. Their decisions are clearly meant to garner more cash cows, and they continue being made today. Progress matters, but at what stage in progression doesn't matter. If a game is offering items for players to spend real money on that directly affect the gameplay, it adheres to a P2W model. If a player can spend money on in-game currency to purchase materials through microtransactions, those of which can be used to upgrade gear to high levels, thereby making the character stronger, it's P2W. When players hit the end-game, it's all about farming, and upgrading gear makes the character stronger. You need materials to upgrade said gear, and these materials can be bought. Given that this game has PvP, P2W is a valid argument here because players that spend more money on upgrades and materials will usually be stronger than players that don't spend anything. Even if they spend thousands of dollars to upgrade their gear, and they aren't up to par with a player who's stronger than them, the spender wins because they have more, and they get more than what a player who grinds through the game could receive on a daily basis. I agree, it's easier to just play normally, and it's financially-conserving, but if someone is a PvPer in this game, they're going to have a miserable time because whales will dominate the chain of competition; not the casual players. It's also true Trove could be done casually, but that makes it a worthless system because you only get one key daily. I didn't say the event was for whales per say, but it's heavily-restricted such that it can favor for whales. Being restricted from any event isn't fun, and the Legends Reborn restricts a large portion of the Blade & Soul community from playing. Only those who've played this game for a long time, or continue grinding in this game can participate; casual and new players can't, and that's what's bad about this event.

By restrictions, I meant that the Legends Reborn event requires players to be at a high-level and have high-tier gear in order to participate in the event. That's a restriction that goes against players that just join the game, or just found out about Blade & Soul because of this event. Events for any videogame should be open and optional to everyone, not just high-leveled, top-geared players. It makes the "event" sound akin to end-game content, and there's nothing wrong with end-game content, but when such content is announced as an event, that's bad. However, not every event must be open to everyone guaranteed; going down that route would severely-restrict what events can be made. Some events could be open-world events, and if players haven't unlocked a certain zone in which the event is taking place, then that's a restriction, but it's a fair one. Events with these kinds of restrictions are fair because they're obtainable and not primarily determined by RNG or grinding time. Yes, players will need to grind through the story to unlock zones, but that's not as bad as grinding for gear, and for Blade & Soul, grinding through the entire Campaign already rewards high-leveled gear, on top of unlocking all the zones. Gear requirement as an event restriction is problematic because not every player has the best gear, so when an event can only reward players for killing a very high-leveled, high-health boss within a very short time limit, and certain gear is required, that's a very restricted event, and it's fun for some, but not for everyone. Speed of update deployment doesn't matter when considering whether an update to a game was the right choice or not. Games could be updated quickly or slowly, but if the updates for either don't make sense, are irrelevant, and/ or dull, then it doesn't matter how fast they were programmed and deployed. I guess I shouldn't have phrased the term "meaningless updates" because every announcement, there's a long page of class and system updates, so it's my guess that lots of changes are being made. However, I phrased it that way because when I compare the updates today compared to the updates 2 years ago when Blade & Soul released in NA, those updates added lots of new content and were enriching; today's updates focus heavily on the Hongmoon Store and these "events." Hongmoon Store updates aren't bad because they notify players of new items, but when that becomes a primary over other important news to announce, that's a problem. It's not a matter of relevance; it's a matter of what players can get in-game using real money. Microtransactions continue tainting the gaming culture, but they are necessary for running a F2P game since that's the primary source of income for the industry that developed the game. However, for Blade & Soul, the reason why many consider this game a P2W is because players can purchase materials that directly-affect the gameplay using real money. Materials in this game are used to upgrade weapons, and all of them have to be farmed one way or another. Offering the option to buy materials with cash generates more income for the industry, but it turns the game into a P2W model because there will be those player "whales" that spend thousands to be at the top. This was the case with Perfect World; and it's still a problem in that game today, but not as bad as it was many years ago. Bottom-line is this: if what a player buys through microtransactions affects their gameplay in any way, be it making them stronger, deal more damage, have better buffs, etc., it's a P2W model. If it's just cosmetics, than it's paying for enjoyment, or paying for something a player wants that won't make them any stronger than other players.

And on top of what InoriYuzurihaDesu said, you could run League of Legends on just about laptop, and that's because Riot Games optimized their game that way to reach an audience who couldn't afford gaming laptops. Blizzard Entertainment did the same thing with World of Warcraft. It doesn't have to be a gaming laptop, though, unless you're always on-the-go. A desktop is more preferable and worth the money because of the extra storage space; only downside is that it isn't easily portable.

Okay, so the content of this post is long, so I split it up to make it easier to read. If you took the time to read this, thanks. If you want to hate on me, go ahead. If I'm wrong about some things, correct me. Intro. What this Game is Now (general explanation) Point of the Thread Thanks for reading guys!

Okay, as a player who doesn't even PvP as much as you do, and even players that do PvP a lot, I'm having a hard time understanding what you're issue with the patch is. Is it the PvP changes? Is it the class changes? It sounds like those two, but you type up so poorly that I can't understand it. Also, it shouldn't be a surprise that PvP is unbalanced in Blade & Soul. It's always been like that, so I wouldn't get excited over something like this because it's commonplace.

I don't like elitist players, and this post sounds like it came from an elitist player. However, I understood that you were a player trying to do something, but someone bothered you, gave you trouble, and didn't stop, so I see your point. Also, seeing how you treated this situation and shared it with us in this manner, I can tell you're one of those few players who cares about getting the right party to do the right dungeon, not accepting "the best of the best" only, but accepting those with the right gear. To be honest, hearing this gives me more of a reason to say why the gear requirement was poorly-designed for this game, but that's not what I'm hear to say. I don't have much to say in the way of how the game should treat kicking players and blocking them off from re-joining since I don't host dungeons as often as others, but this ^ is something I agree with. Having a timer go off for a player you kicked, by which they can't rejoin, helps allow other potential players you're looking for join, and that's desirable. I'm on board with this one. However, I would say that nowadays, you're likely to not get the players you want, and instead of wasting time arguing with the person, try being flexible. It doesn't hurt, and ultimately you both win because you still do the run you want, and you don't have any fuss to deal with afterwards, while the other player who's trying to get the dungeon run in does it without arguing.